Under the cover of the new moon, we hunted for bullfrogs in the Sierra National Forest.

Along the brook that trickled toward the meadow, our group shined our flashlights, looking for the glimmer of bullfrog eyes. The children vibrated with excitement, out after dark, out on the unofficial last weekend of summer.

Our expert guide, my friend’s fifth-grader, showed us how: you had to be quick and decisive, and unsqueamish, getting into the mud and cupping your hands around the bullfrogs, which are stunned by the bright lights for a few seconds. Most of the ones we caught were adorably small, their moist skin mottled green, gray and black, and tiny enough to fit into the palm of a child’s hand. “So cute!” we cooed and then released them. With a mighty leap, the bullfrogs vaulted off and into the night, joining the chirping crickets.

Teenagers approached, clutching a Ziploc bag jammed with bullfrogs, each bigger than a man’s fist.

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“Poked them,” a boy said. He carried a long dowel, and I pictured him gently nudging a bullfrog into the bag.

“Are they still alive?” I asked

“They have holes in them,” he replied matter-of-factly.

That’s when we realized their dowel had two nails sticking out of it; it looked like the sort of crude but effective weapon that you’d make to protect yourself in the zombie apocalypse.

I was grossed out, but also curious. “How do you cook it?” I asked.

“With seasoning salt and butter. Wrap in tinfoil and then grill it,” the boy said. “Tastes like trout.”

Flaky white meat? We’d been eating meat all weekend, purchased from the supermarket: ground hamburger, steak, sausage and hot dogs. “We’re hypocrites. We prefer our meat packaged so we don’t have to think about where it came from,” my husband said wryly.

It turns out that bullfrogs are invasive, competing with and preying on native species, gobbling up algae and the eggs or offspring of many native fishes, reptiles, amphibians, water birds and small mammals.

Though their native range is in the eastern United States and Great Plains, they have spread through the aquarium trade and as a food source — frog legs, anyone?

Earlier this summer, I’d encountered another non-native species on a camping trip outside of Placerville, where our friends’ children caught rusty-colored crawfish. Crawfish, which resemble miniature freshwater lobsters, can muddy streams and lakes and kill off the dragonfly nymphs that consume mosquito larvae.

If you dangle a piece of hot dog at the end of the line, the crawfish emerge and you scoop them up with a net and drop them into a bucket. After trapping the crawfish for a while, the children tipped them back into the stream. When they ran into another group that planned to eat their catch, the children were shocked. What they viewed as pets, somebody else deemed their dinner.

There’s a movement afoot — invasivorism — to control the population of these interlopers by dining upon them. If you’re catching these critters yourself, you have to face that you’re killing a living creature. And yet, shouldn’t we be reminded? Every time we choose to eat meat, we can’t deny our complicity.

Later, I would look up directions for how to skin a bullfrog. At the Honest Food website, former restaurant cook Hank Shaw provides step-by-step directions and photos that have been shared on social media more than 6,000 times. “Take the pliers and grab the loose skin on the frog’s back,” he advises. “Anchor the frog with one hand and yank the skin off with the other. It’s like pulling the frog’s pants down.”

How we eat has a global impact. I’ve been deeply troubled by the recent images of Brazilian rain forests, set on fire by those who clear the land for their livelihood, for cattle grazing and to feed the world’s demand for meat.

On our drive back from the mountains, thinking about such matters, I ordered an Impossible Burger. The meat substitute made from soy and potato protein, coconut and sunflower oil, and plant-based heme debuted nationwide at Burger King last month, with a taste and texture eerily similar to the original burger. It’s a highly caloric, highly processed treat of the sort best indulged upon on occasion, but the Impossible Burger, and its rival, Beyond Meat, are putting the environment and animal welfare into the forefront of public conversation — issues we should consider at our every meal.